Mr. Ness?”
The proprietor rolled his eyes. “Huh! You see the front of my store? That’s the most god-awful pink I’ve ever laid eyes on. Last week it was apple-green, and the week before that it was purple.”
“Does your wife paint your storefront?”
“Nope. My daughter does. For years my wife’s been tellin’ my Edith that she’s artistic and that her father’s a mean old fuddy-duddy with no sense of adventure. I’m so married I can’t look my wife in the face and tell her she’s crazy.”
“Yeah, I see your problem, Mr. Ness. I couldn’t tell my fiancée she’s crazy, either.”
“I’m tellin’ ya, a man’s gotta think real careful about gettin’ himself tied down to a woman. It’s kinda like Russian roulette, if you know what I mean.”
Lance bit back a chuckle. “Seems to me if you’re married you could say that to your wife, couldn’t you? You know, just be honest with her?”
“Oh, well, maybe I could. And maybe I’d sleep in the barn for the next twenty years. You got a lot to learn about women, son.”
Lance sighed. What did he know about Marianne, apart from her tendency to give orders and never say thank-you? But he liked what he did know about her. She was sensible and hardworking and generally fair-minded. And darn good-looking.
He continued to mull carefully over the tray of rings until his eye fell on a medium-wide gold band with some design carved on the surface, some kind of flowers, roses, maybe. He bent to look at it close up. “How much is that one?”
“Four dollars.”
He hesitated.
“I got cheaper rings, son.”
Still he hesitated. But for some reason he wanted the one with the roses engraved on it. Something about it just felt like Marianne. He spilled four silver dollars on to the counter and slipped the ring into his pocket. No matter what her middle name was, he liked Marianne, and he wanted her to have a pretty wedding ring.
* * *
Marianne was late to supper, so Lance took a seat in the dining room and gave the waitress a grin.
“Where’s your girl tonight?” the woman asked.
“Still over at the dressmaker’s, I guess.”
The woman laughed softly. “Is she ordering a dress to be made up?”
“Yeah. A wedding dress.”
She snorted. “If I know Verena Forester, that could take most of the night. You probably won’t see your girl ’til morning, so you might as well have some supper.” She slapped down a menu.
But before he could study it, Marianne appeared. She was out of breath, and her face looked kinda shiny, like she was lit up from the inside. His heart gave a horse-sized kick.
Before he could stand up even halfway, she plopped on to the chair across from him. “I have had the most trying afternoon!”
“Me, too,” he admitted.
“I’ve just spent three hours at the dressmaker’s.” She leaned across the table and lowered her voice. “Lance, I’ve never even been inside a dressmaker’s shop before. I had no idea about... Anyway, Verena Forester, she’s the dressmaker, helped me choose a dress pattern and took my measurements and everything. I felt like Cinderella.”
Lance chuckled. “Well, Cinderella, I found out there’s only one church in town. Not Lutheran and not Catholic, just a plain old church. Smoke River Community Church.” He didn’t mention the two hours he’d spent at Ness’s Mercantile, poring over the tray of wedding rings.
The waitress tapped her pencil on her order pad. “We have chicken tonight. Fried, baked or stewed.”
“Fried,” they said together.
“Potatoes?”
“Fried,” they chorused again.
The waitress laughed. “Is there anything you two disagree about?”
“Not so far,” Lance said.
“Wait,” Marianne countered. “We do disagree on something, Lance. My ginger-poached pears, remember?”
“Got peach pie tonight,” the waitress said. “You agree on that?”
“Sure,” Lance said.
“With ice cream,” Marianne added.
“Yeah. Chocolate ice cream,” he said.
“Chocolate!” Marianne blurted out. “Ick!”
The waitress grinned and headed for the kitchen. When she had disappeared, Marianne reached over and caught his sleeve.
“Lance, I... I have a confession to make.”
His belly flip-flopped. “What about? You don’t like chocolate ice cream?”
“It’s not about ice cream. It’s about...well, I’m getting nervous.”
Another flip-flop. “What are you nervous about, Marianne?”
“About tomorrow. Getting married. I’ve never been married before.”
He released the breath he’d been holding. Bridal jitters. What made her think a man didn’t get the jitters, too?
“Marianne, I’ve never been married before, either. What exactly are you nervous about?”
“The next forty years,” she said in a subdued voice.
“Oh.” Relief made his voice sound strained. He’d thought maybe it was him she was nervous about. Or maybe their—he swallowed hard—wedding night. Oh, God, she had to be a virgin. Funny, he’d never thought about it before. He’d just assumed...
“Could you be more specific?” he ventured. “What about the next forty years makes you nervous?”
She dropped her forehead on to her palm. “The forty years part. Marriage is such a, well, a permanent thing. Do you think we will like each other for the next forty years?”
“There’s no way to know that now,” he said with a smile. “Ask me again in forty years.”
She lifted her head and tried to smile at him. Her mouth wasn’t working quite right because it looked like something halfway between a lopsided grimace and a shaky O.
“I’m also worried about my wedding dress,” she said.
“Huh? You mean whether it’ll be ready in time?”
She shook her head. “No. I mean whether you will like it.”
All at once he felt warm all over. She cares about whether I will like her wedding dress? He started to smile, and then another thought popped into his brain. Maybe that meant she was worried about how she would look in her wedding dress? Maybe she really cared about how she would look to him?
Or maybe he wasn’t the least bit important in this business. She needed him only because she needed to marry somebody, and he was the handiest somebody around.
The waitress reappeared. “Two fried chicken dinners and two coffees, right?” She plopped down both plates and the coffee cups. “Gonna have to wait on the peach pie. It’s not out of the oven yet.”
An uneasy silence fell. Marianne picked up her fork to stab a slice of fried potato, then set it back down on the table. She’d lost her appetite. An entire afternoon spent answering dressmaker Verena Forester’s questions and trying to calm the butterflies careening around her stomach was taking its toll. The last thing she needed to do was add a fried potato to the battle going on inside of her.
“Marianne? You look like a ghost just